Can a new form of cryptography solve the internet’s privacy problem?
The ability of two strangers to pool their knowledge without revealing any personal information to each other is a seemingly paradoxical idea from theoretical computer science that is fuelling what many are calling the next revolution in tech.
The emergence of applications has driven the theory, which is now sufficiently well developed to be commercially viable. Microsoft, for example, uses fully homomorphic encryption when you register a new password: the password is encrypted and then sent to a server who checks whether or not that password is in a list of passwords that have been discovered in data breaches, without the server being able to identify your password. Meta, Google and Apple have also over the last year or so been introducing similar tools to some of their products.
